


Steadfast Eyes

by crimsonwinter



Series: Jolto Poetry [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Jolto, M/M, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-18
Updated: 2015-07-18
Packaged: 2018-04-09 22:38:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4366886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crimsonwinter/pseuds/crimsonwinter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Our chests would brush, and I would flush, and I swore I saw something a lot like lust in those steadfast eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Steadfast Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> part 1 of jolto poetry

I thought I might as well be useful.

With an interest in medicine and years of study under my belt, it couldn’t hurt.

But the field was not what I’d expected.

The golden dust had me coughing for weeks, and the sun kissed my cheeks so often - they peeled.

Fortunately, the boys I knew were funny, Hell, they were riots. 

Stuck up in our tents, elbowing each other to get a view of a magazine, reminiscing about our girls back home.

It was like a movie, and for a while, I was almost entertained.

Then the scrapes turned to wounds, and the wounds turned to deaths, and I couldn’t count fatalities on my left hand alone. 

I saw men die. Good men. Men with wide eyes and sharp laughs.

When it happened, I could barely get my hands on him, patch not even one gash, before he was slipping through my fingers, dead and gone.

So I kept a stiff lip, moved about the months doing my job and only my job.

I had bad days. Sometimes I hoped I’d be shot, just to take the edge off.

Perhaps there were others ways I could have gotten on; I know some men smoked and drank like fiends, so much that they stumbled around in a dream.

I had to be awake. For the men. Steady hands and calm eyes.

Calm eyes. Like his.

Because once it started, I found myself looking up at them for more than advice. 

He’d visit me with a beer or two, sit on the cot, and tell me that there will always be deaths. Young deaths. Too many.

And I sought comfort in him, of course I did. 

Oftentimes we’d stay up, holed away in a hot, dusty tent, counting the friendly beetles and talking of nothing important.

Those calm, blue eyes found me in the dark and kept me sane.

We looked similar, and we paired up when we could, so they called us brothers.

Brothers of war, brothers of honor.

But unlike brothers, there would be fleeting moments of something else.

I’d catch it, like his hot breath on my neck when drunk and dancing to the orange glow of a lamp.

Our chests would brush, and I would flush, and I swore I saw something a lot like lust in those steadfast eyes.

So naturally, after so many frisky afternoons and tentative nights in which we shared a bed, something happened.

The first time it was fast and incomplete, heady and sweaty and breathless, cramped in the little space we had.

We fell asleep nervously.

The second time it was slow, careful traces of fingers and rolling spines, long kisses.

There would have been a third, I’m sure, if I hadn’t been shot.

But I was, and he didn’t visit me as I recovered. It seemed that would make it too real.

He was a major, I was a captain, and I was leaving.

Although I think what we had may have run its course. 

Heated escapades and silence was all it was, so by the time I made it back to London, he was just an untellable wartime story.

But God, how I think of it now.


End file.
